Rumor has it that "youTube" has a City of Ripon promotional piece on the baking of the world's largest chocolate chip cookie. It includes video footage of the process Ripon Foods went though to "make it happen". The City was trying to create an identity. If Ripon Foods would sponsor baking the largest cookie, the City would promote "Cookietown USA". In small letters would be "The Home of Ripon Foods". Suddenly, July 11, 1992 would become the best "Riponfest" day ever.
The cookie was to be baked at the City park on Riponfest day. The hard part was making it happen. It was calculated that the cookie had to be 1 inch thick and I don't remember the diameter (I think about 30 feet). I do know it took two large mixers at the cookie plant to prepare enough chocolate chip dough to achieve the record (over 3,000 pounds). The pomotion said that several million chocolate chips were included. The baking time would be approximately 2-2.5 hours. That is hours. Normally in our cookie ovens at the plant, we would bake cookies in 7-10 minutes. That is minutes.
The City agreed to pipe enough natural gas to fire a crude outdoor oven. It had burners under a metal round rotary oven plate along with burners over the top. Our Ripon Foods employees volunteered to spread the cookie on the oven (it took over an hour). The biggest fear was that the cookie would not properly bake and "rise". It was a heat transfer challenge.
It turned out to be a beautiful day and the cookie got baked. I don't remember how many thousands of hot cookies were consumed. The City got lots of favorable "press coverage" and Ripon Foods got to pay the bills and feel good. Nobody ever wanted to figure the costs of the cookie production but $20,000 would not be an exaggeration. Sometimes you can't measure an effort in dollars and sense. In terms of community pride it was priceless.
The Guiness Book of Records had representatives on sight to verify the "World's Largest Cookie". We were certified and entitled to look in the next issue of Guinness to see our name. The record didn't last very long. I think the next year somebody baked a bigger cookie. For a moment in time, the Ripon Foods cookie had the record.
Then Ripon Food's "love" relationship with the City changed when the "Foods" was sold in 1999. Hey, no love affair lasts forever (oops, some do).
The whole city of Ripon got a sugar high that day and were part of a little bit of history.
I was there!
Love,
Dad
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